the garden of emeralds

Chaitén, Los Lagos, Chile

Chaitén was created before European conquer and was first explored by European conquistadors in the search for the City of the Caesars, a city of legend full of gold, silver, and diamonds, somewhere in the Andes. However, Chaitén was first officially listed as a town in 1940 and served as a port.

Chaitén, 1950

In 2008, for the first time in over nine thousand years, the nearby Mt Chaitén volcano erupted. The city of Chaitén was evacuated while Mt Chaitén continued to erupt for months continuously. Because of the volcano, the town was also flooded due to lahars (extremely dangerous flows of mud, debris, and rocks) causing the nearby river to overflow. Currently, the town of Chaitén is being rebuilt, though there is controversy whether it should be or not because of the state it’s in. Some of the population has returned, and it currently has a population of 3,500 residents, of its original 7,000.